November 08, 2006

THE MAIN REASON WHY I SOMETIMES SUSPECT THAT I'M NOT THE PEANUT'S REAL FATHER

The drama! Good Lord, THE DRAMA!

As most of you know, I'm a pretty mellow guy
who believes that there are very few things in life worth freaking out
about. Therefore, I'm willing to give my daughter the benefit of the doubt
because she is, after all, only two years old. However, lately, she's been acting
very diva-ish, a development that I like to blame on Tyra
Banks. (I'm kidding, of course. The kid much prefers watching Jerry
Springer.)

But really, in all seriousness, we're at a point where everything with my daughter has to be done in a very particular way and it's rapidly becoming apparent that I have no freaking idea what that way is. Today, she
threw a total hissy fit and broke down in tears because I had the gall to put green socks on
her feet instead of brown. Bad daddy, bad!

FIVE WAYS IN WHICH MY DAUGHTER IS DEFINITELY RELATED TO ME

1. My stomach and I have a rather tenuous relationship. Maybe it's
from all the scotch and spicy food but my doctor thinks I'm probably
suffering from IBD or colitis (OK, not a REAL doctor. I don't go to those. When I say "doctor," I really mean WebMD.)
As part of my self-diagnosis, I sometimes take fiber pills throughout
the day, a ritual that often leads to periods of flatulence.
Basically, I can get downright farty at times. My daughter, I would
venture to guess, probably farts more than any two-year-old on the
entire planet. Seriously, she blows gas like a bean-eating 75-year-old
lactose-intolerant truck driver. It's completely awesome and I plan on
recording it sometime in the future so I can play it back for her dates
when they come by to pick her up.

2. My beautiful wife good-naturedly chides me for my gift of gab
but it's true. For a cynically jaded New Yorker, I'm genuinely
interested in other peoples' lives and will often talk to complete
strangers for hours. It seems as though my young daughter is becoming
quite the conversationalist herself. Unfortunately, she hasn't figured
it all out yet. Last week, I caught her having some jovially
long-winded discussions with (a) some flowers, (b) the dog, and (c) a
sandwich. Let me tell you something, my friends. There are very few
things cuter in this world than hearing your daughter cheerfully say, "Hi, sandwich! Sit down! I eat!"

3. One of the reasons I quit smoking pot was because I found myself
developing some strange form of OCD. After each hit, I would
immediately have to go clean my hands and wash my face. I'm noticing a
similar pattern emerge with the Peanut. When she first started feeding
herself, she'd usually finish dinner with her face and body completely
covered in food. Now, she insists on having both her hands and mouth
wiped clean after EACH AND EVERY BITE! If even a single morsel of food
gets on her delicate fingers, she immediately looks at me, holds out
her hand, and says, "WIPE!" It's official. I am now my daughter's
personal valet.

4. Despite my innate and well-documented love of television, I was
one of those annoying parents who never let his child watch a second of
television until she was 18 months old. You know, the whole "studies
have shown..." blah, blah, blah. However, what those studies failed to
show was the fact that a freakish love of television is apparently
embedded in one's DNA. For my daughter, TV was like love at first
sight. Every night after dinner, she turns to the BossLady and says, "TV now, mama? TV
ok?" Which is funny because that's exactly what I say to the BossLady after dinner.

5. Speaking of dinner...my daughter and I both eat food like we're
in prison. We crouch over our meals and inhale them as quickly as
possible in case some big guy named Ben Dover comes over and shivs us for
our applesauce. We sometimes even use our utensils to guard our plates. No way we're giving up our chow to any of our fellow inmates unless we get some cigarettes or prison wine in return!

By the way, did you know that Martha Stewart's prison
name was "M. Diddy?" It's true. I read it in Vanity Fair upon her
release from the big house. My favorite quote from the article was
when she was talking about jail: ""I hate lockdown. It's just hideous." Unfortunately, they didn't have any quotes from M.Diddy about what it was like to be thrown in the hole and peed on. Too bad.

By the way, I just googled the term "prison nicknames" and I found this awesome Prison Bitch Name Generator. Mine's B.F. Goodlick. What's yours?

October 10, 2006

In many ways, I sometimes feel that BossLady and I are wholly unqualified to be parents.

Not in any of the BIG or IMPORTANT ways. When it comes to raising our child to be a thoughtful, caring, intelligent and productive member of society, I'm fairly confident that we're just as capable as most other people. At the very least, we seem to be at least as capable as the parents on the local news!

It’s just that BossLady and I are both a little silly and goofy. For example, the other day, we were lying romantically in bed when BossLady turned to me and said, “let’s play a game. You try to touch my face with your tongue as lightly as humanly possible. Then, I’ll do the same to you.”

With great earnestness, I mustered up all my physical skills to touch her nose with what I was convinced was probably the lightest touch in the history of mankind, a touch barely perceptible to the human eye and recordable only by a finely-calibrated tongue sensometer developed by the finest scientists in all of Switzerland. If I had touched any lighter, I’m convinced I would have been splitting atoms.

Brimming with confidence, I then turned to the BossLady and said, “Ha! Try to top THAT!” Smugly secure in my imminent victory, I leaned my head back on the pillow, closed my eyes, and proffered my nose for her attempt.

BossLady then proceeded to lick MY ENTIRE FACE with her slobbering tongue and yelled, “Ha! I LOSE!”

We play these kinds of stupid games a lot.

One time, we decided to produce our own two-person play on the subway. It was late at night and there were only a few passengers on our train so we decided to sit apart from one another and pretend that we were two strangers making a spontaneous love connection. During the train ride, I became The World’s Greatest Lover, a man capable of introducing myself to a woman, chatting her up briefly, start making out with her, and convince her to get off the train and come home with me…all in the span of 5 minutes!

We also like to speak in fake foreign accents when we’re abroad (or in the South.) We love eating foods that require no utensils. We like to fake-invent new variations of alarm clocks (like the scent-emitting, vibrating-pillow coffee clock. Don’t even THINK about stealing that shit, yo!) We sometimes go to karaoke bars and sing TV theme songs. And we like making up our own children’s stories based on fast food chains (“Once upon a time, there was a King of All Burgers who fell madly in love with a beautiful princess from the Castle of White.”)

So yeah, I guess we’re definitely not the Asian version of Stepford parents. However, we prefer to use the term "offbeat."

Since the Peanut is so young right now, she just thinks we’re fun parents who love showing her the food in our mouths while eating, walking down the street loudly singing “Wheels on the Bus,” and sitting on the floor together while putting Elmo stickers all over our naked bodies.

But what if the Peanut grows up to be a stoically serious kid who thinks we’re complete idiots? Maybe silliness skips a generation! Sure, we’re fun NOW but I can easily envision a not-too-distant future where we’re just plain embarrassing! Will she be reluctant to introduce us to her friends? Will she blatantly avoid telling us about school functions? There’s a small part of me that would be absolutely crushed to learn that my own daughter was completely embarrassed by her ridiculously goofy parents.

However, there’s another part of me that thinks it would just be awesome!

By the way, I am currently writing this post from Fayetteville, Arkansas. It's a good thing Ptolemy never lived here because otherwise we'd all still be convinced that the earth was flat (Lucretius lives!) Just out of curiosity, do I have any readers here in Arkansas? If so, please stop me in the street and say hi. I'll be the Asian guy.

September 19, 2006

When I was growing up, I'm pretty sure that none of the parents I knew grappled with the "good cop, bad cop" dilemmas of modern-day parenting.

In my neighborhood, everyone's dad was the bad cop. Moms, on the other hand, were always a pushover. The only time moms were scary was when they threatened to rat you out and tell your dad when you did something wrong. For a little kid, the scariest words in the English language have got to be, "Go to your room and wait until your father gets home! You're going to be in big trouble then, Mister!"

When you're only 6 years old and someone is calling you "Mister," it's a pretty safe bet that you're very close to getting your ass spanked.

Sitting alone in my room like a death row inmate waiting for my father to come home, I'd always contemplate how I could make a break for it. Should I run away? How would I survive? How far could I make it with only a Mighty Mac jacket, two Kit-Kat bars, and $1.27 in pennies? Dammit, I needed a reference guide. Where the hell was my copy of "From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler" when I needed it?

By the way, is there any greater children's book than "From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler"? To this day, whenever I'm near the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I think back wistfully of Claudia and Jamie hiding in the restroom, bathing in the fountain, and sleeping on antique beds. In my opinion, this is the greatest children's literature book of all-time (ranking just slightly ahead of "Jonathan Livingston Seagull," "To Kill a Mockingbird," "James & the Giant Peach," and the entire Encyclopedia Brown series.)

What the hell was I talking about again? Oh yeah...good cop/bad cop.

As most of you know, the Peanut is in the throes of her terrible twos. Don't get me wrong. She's still a wonderfully sweet child who can light up a room with her laughter. However, there are other moments when she will throw tantrums like a young John McEnroe and I start wondering if it's not too late to stick her in a box marked "Return to Sender."

The worst aspect of dealing with the Peanut when she throws a tantrum, refuses to get in her stroller or simply must have a cookie by any means necessary? Well, someone's got to be the Bad Cop.

Now, we often hear about the many trials and tribulations of the modern-day parent. It's become apparent that no serious discussion of parenting today is complete unless we talk about the work/life balance, the Mommie Wars, the emergence of SAHDs, or the changing gender roles among today's parents.

Hell, I think it's great that these discussions are taking place. We're so darn enlightened, aren't we?

But to tell you the truth? You want to know my REAL problem right now?

I don't want to be Bad Cop!

It's not that I don't want to be a disciplinarian when it comes to the Peanut. I'm a firm believer in discipline and there's no way in hell that I'm going to raise a spoiled child. It's just that I'd much rather be "Mr. Fun Guy." I hate being the Bad Cop.

But I realize that it's not fair to my wife for her to be the bad cop so I'm perfectly willing to share the responsibilities also. The funny thing is that she doesn't like the job either. As usual, we've discussed this openly with one another and we both feel it's imperative that we put up a united front. Therefore, any time the Peanut starts acting up, we'll often find ourselves in an amusing game of "Bad Cop, Bad Cop." Sometimes, it's pure comedy. It's like the toddler version of "Serpico." Everyone's a bad cop.

I don't know. Sometimes, I think instead of playing Good Cop or Bad Cop, we should just play Tough Cop. Maybe I'll start a series of parenting books based on the philosophical tenets of Dirty Harry. Can you imagine? Every time Peanut starts acting up, I'll squint my eyes, reach for my water pistol, and say, "Go ahead, punk. Make my day!"

It could work, right? Anyway, how do you folks handle the division of discplinary duties?